Double-standard?

A thought about this supposed "Intelligence" expert.

If he really was one. he won't be one ever again. Whats more, he would never be able to work for another government contractor or agency. Violating your clearence like this guy is doing in the press and not through proper channels would mean he is gonna starve and possibly face jail time. I think what is more likely is that he is not now and never has been an actual cleared intelligence person and has probably never seen the inside of NSA.

Edit: Even when you leave the service the non-disclosure statements you sign are pretty severe.


[ 07-10-2003, 02:04 PM: Message edited by: MagiK ]

[Chewbacca]

So MagiK, we should starve and jail whistleblowers for telling the cold hard truth?

God forbid the president lie to the nation and send it's citizens off to die based on mistruth and no-one stands up to say so.

by MagiK: ...I think what is more likely is that he is not now and never has been an actual cleared intelligence person and has probably never seen the inside of NSA.

This was the first time an administration official has put his name to specific claims. The whistleblower, Gregory Thielmann, served as a director in the state department's bureau of intelligence until his retirement in September, and had access to the classified reports which formed the basis for the US case against Saddam, spelled out by President Bush and his aides.

I dont know if this is the guy you are refering too, Gregory Thielmann, but he has some pretty rock-solid credentials as stated.

[Timber Loftis]

MagiK, you just gave the whistle-blower loads more credibility in my book. Facing strict penalties means it is more likely true.

BTW, can whatever monetary penalties the hush agreement imposes compare to a chance to be on Larry King live or Face the Nation??

[Davros]

Nice article Chewbacca - or to restate it, we are now in the era of "Remotely Plausible Deniability". RPD isn't much of an acronym though - I prefer "Gee Whatta Balls-up" [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Timber Loftis]

Today's NY Times (I think it's true [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img] ) [img]tongue.gif[/img]
__________________________________________________ __

Bush and Rice Say C.I.A. Approved Uranium Comment
By KIRK SEMPLE

President Bush said today that intelligence agencies had approved the assertion he made in his State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear material from Africa.

The president made his comments during a four-hour visit to Uganda, the fourth country in his five-nation tour of Africa. He spoke shortly after his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said the C.I.A had authorized the specific wording of the statement..

``I gave a speech that was cleared by the intelligence services,'' the president said. ``It was a speech that detailed to the American people the dangers posed by the Saddam Hussein regime. And my government took the appropriate response to those dangers.''

The comments by Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice appeared intended to rebut news reports that said the C.I.A. was raising objections to the claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa. The Washington Post reported today that the C.I.A. tried to persuade the British governmnent to drop a reference to the purported deal from an official intelligence paper. And a report broadcast by CBS News late Thursday said that the White House had ignored a request by the C.I.A. to remove the statement from the State of the Union address.

The White House acknowledged this week that it had erred in including the statement in the State of the Union address because it was based on faulty intelligence. The claim was in part based on forged documents alleging a transaction between Iraq and Niger.

Ms. Rice told reporters en route from South Africa to Uganda that the C.I.A. had approved the contents of the State of the Union address before Mr. Bush delivered it in January.

``The C.I.A. cleared the speech in its entirety,'' Ms. Rice said in a nearly hour-long interview aboard the president's plane. ``If the C.I.A. - the director of Central Intelligence - had said, `Take this out of the speech,' it would have been gone.''

Critics, including some Democrats on Capitol Hill, have accused the Bush administration of misleading the public by overstating the weapons threat posed by Iraq in order to garner more support for a war against Saddam Hussein.

The White House has faced questions about the uranium purchase for months. On Sunday, The New York Times published an article on its Op-Ed page by Joseph C. Wilson 4th, a former ambassador who was sent last year to Niger, West Africa, to investigate reports of the attempted purchase. Mr. Wilson, who said he was dispatched after Vice President Dick Cheney's office took an interest in the matter, reported back that the intelligence was likely fraudulent.

Ms. Rice said the specific reference to African uranium had been scrutinized by the C.I.A.

``There was even some discussion on that specific sentence, so that it reflected better what the C.I.A. thought and the speech was cleared,'' she told reporters this morning.

In particular, she said, the agency raised an objection to a reference to Iraq's trying to obtain ``yellow-cake'' uranium. ``Some specifics about amount and place were taken out,'' she said, but that once those changes were made, ``the speech was cleared.''

Ms. Rice said that the State Department's intelligence agency had expressed reservations about the information on the African uranium but that the general consensus among the intelligence agencies was that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa.

In his State of the Union speech in January, Mr. Bush said: ``The International Arms Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990's that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five differnt methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''

Since coalition troops invaded Iraq, they have found no biological or chemical weapons.

BREAKING NEWS

This story is from our news.com.au network Source: AFP
back PRINT-FRIENDLY VERSION EMAIL THIS STORY

French link to UK's Iraq intelligence
From correspondents in London

TWO foreign intelligence services, thought to be those of France and Italy, supplied Britain with the information for its controversial claim that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had sought uranium from Africa, the Financial Times newspaper reported Monday.

Britain made the uranium claim in a dossier last September despite being told the US Central Intelligence Agency had "reservations" about its inclusion.

The paper said its information came from senior Whitehall sources.

US administration officials have criticised the inclusion of a reference to the nuclear claim and the nation in President George W. Bush's January 28 State of the Union Address, and pointed out that it had not been corroborated by Washington's intelligence network.

CIA chief George Tenet, who took the blame for Bush's discredited prewar claim, came under fire again Sunday with a leading Republican senator suggesting he resign.

The Financial Times said it had learnt the original information on the nuclear claim came from two west European countries, and not from now discredited documents that proved to be forgeries.

The financial daily reported an official saying the information from foreign intelligence services was not shared with the US because it "was not ours to share".

The Italian government on Sunday denied reports that its intelligence services handed the United States and Britain documents indicating that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapons programme.

The denial followed a report by Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper that Rome's SISMI intelligence services had given Washington and London documents in late 2001, showing the regime of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had sought uranium from the African state.

There is considerable doubt in London and Washington over the strength of the US and British case for ending UN arms inspections and launching the March 20 invasion to topple the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Hans Blix, who was the UN weapons chief inspector in Iraq in the run-up to war, added to the criticism, telling The Independent on Sunday that Britain had "over-interpreted the intelligence they had."

The Daily Telegraph reported that "US intelligence sources believe that the most likely source of the MI6 intelligence was the French secret service, the DGSE. Niger is a former French colony and its uranium mines are run by a french company that comes under the control of the French atomic energy commission."

The French secret service is believed to have refused to allow MI6 to give the Americans "credible" information showing that Iraq was trying to buy uranium ore from Niger, the Telegraph reported.

A third British newspaper, The Guardian, cited government officials saying the nuclear claim came from a "close ally" but one which didn't want Britain to give it to the US as a further pretext for war.

"It has become an enormously overblown issue," White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told CNN.

"The president of the United States did not go to war because of the question of whether or not Saddam Hussein sought the uranium in Africa," she said.

Earlier, on Fox News Sunday, she dismissed the notion as "ludicrous."

"There was a machine designed for shredding plastic. Men were dropped into it and we were again made to watch. Sometimes they went in head first and died quickly. Sometimes they went in feet first and died screaming. It was horrible."
-Iraqi torture witness' sworn statement to INDICT

“In 1991 Saddam killed 500,000 people when they rose against him. Nobody demonstrated against him then. But now the United States wants to get rid of the dictator, people are demonstrating against it.”
-one of the Iraqi liberation soldiers the U.S. is training at "Camp Freedom" in Hungary


"The Iraqi regime and its weapons of mass destruction represent a clear threat to world security. This danger has been explicitly recognized by the U.N."
-Letter by Eight European leaders in support of the United States



"At the end of all of the academic arguments is whether we are willing to pay the price to bring freedom to the people of Iraq. If we are, we will not regret it."
-Vietnam veteran and former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey

"The last thing we want to see is a smoking gun. A gun smokes after it's been fired…. If someone waits for a smoking gun, it's certain we will have waited too long."
-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

"We are praying you will stick to your resolve to liberate our country from a dictatorial tyranny over 30 years which has caused the deaths of nearly 2 million men and women, sons and daughters."
-Letter to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair from Iraqi Exiles

"Of course they have no credibility. If they had any, they certainly lost it in 1991. I don't see that they have acquired any credibility."
-Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector Hans Blix, on the Saddam regime

"If Saddam Hussein fails to comply and we fail to act or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to develop his program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of sanctions and ignore the commitments he's made? Well, he will conclude that the international community's lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on doing more to build an arsenal of devastating destruction. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow. The stakes could not be higher. Some way, someday, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal."
-President Bill Clinton in 1998

"If this were 'all about oil,' we could just declare victory in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia and go home. Who's going to stop us? Our troops are already there!"
-Rush Hudson Limbaugh III

“I am surprised to hear of all the anti-war demonstrations in the West. I wish that the demonstrators could spend just 24 hours in the place I have come from and see the reality of Iraq. Fourteen lost years of my life. Nothing but bread for food — darkness, filth, beatings, torture, killings, bitterness and humiliation.”
-Rafat Abdulmajeed Muhammad, jailed for selling a roll of film to an British journalist

"Iraq under Saddam’s regime has become a land of hopelessness, sadness, and fear. A country where people are ethnically cleansed; prisoners are tortured in more than 300 prisons in Iraq. Rape is systematic . . . congenital malformation, birth defects, infertility, cancer, and various disorders are the results of Saddam’s gassing of his own people. . . the killing and torturing of husbands in front of their wives and children . . . Iraq under Saddam has become a hell and a museum of crimes."
–Iraqi Safia Al Souhail, Advocacy Director of the International Alliance for Justice

[Rokenn]

Interesting post Magik, but totally off-topic. BTW George Bush has the blood of those 500,000 people that died in the 91 on his hands as well as Saddam's. Since he did encourge them to rise up then did nothing to help them.

There are many other countries that have as horrific internal policies as Iraq, but we are not invading them. The human rights abuses was not the reason we went to war, no matter how much the spin doctors want us to 'remember that'. The reason we went to war as as 'self-protection' from the 'clear and intement danger' Saddam posed to the western world. That and the oil of course. The liberating of the Iraqi people, as noble and right that it is, is merely window dressing.

[Chewbacca]

Speaking of double standards...I have always wonder why liberals are always being degraded for being "bleeding hearts" by conservatives, but it is ok to be a "compassionate conservative".

Originally posted by Rokenn: Interesting post Magik, but totally off-topic. BTW George Bush has the blood of those 500,000 people that died in the 91 on his hands as well as Saddam's. Since he did encourge them to rise up then did nothing to help them. I believe if you look, it was the UN that halted Coalition forces at the border of Iraq and forbid any assault on Baghdad or Saddam Hussein. So why blame Bush? or is there something about the name you just don't like? There are many other countries that have as horrific internal policies as Iraq, but we are not invading them. The human rights abuses was not the reason we went to war, no matter how much the spin doctors want us to 'remember that'. The reason we went to war as as 'self-protection' from the 'clear and intement danger' Saddam posed to the western world. That and the oil of course. The liberating of the Iraqi people, as noble and right that it is, is merely window dressing. Since Iraq is the nation in question, I think it is your comments here that are irrelevant and off topic. But that is just my opinion.